A report from the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition
It’s National Physical Fitness & Sports Month! The President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition is excited to keep the journey from #0to60 going by encouraging everyone to #MoveInMay.
This May, stay motivated with the President's Council's Presidential Champions and Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA+) programs! Each program allows you to track your daily physical activity and earn awards.
There are countless ways to get moving and we are asking our partners to help us inspire all Americans to be active. We’ve created this #MoveInMay Playbook where you can find themes, tips and motivational messages that you can promote throughout the month. You can also get ideas to #MoveInMay and every day at 0to60fitness.org !
Importance of Physical Activity
Physical activity provides long-term health benefits for everyone! By being active, you will burn calories that you store from eating throughout the day and—it can be as easy as walking the dog or as rigorous as running a marathon. Providing opportunities for children to be active early on puts them on a path to better physical and mental health. It's never too late to jumpstart a healthy lifestyle.
Physical Activity & Obesity
Physical activity, along with proper nutrition, is beneficial to people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. And it is important that everyone gets active: over the last 20 years, there's been a significant increase in obesity in ...

ChooseMyPlate.gov helps to educate about a healthier lifestyle!!!
MyPlate is a reminder to find your healthy eating style and build it throughout your lifetime. Everything you eat and drink matters. The right mix can help you be healthier now and in the future. This means:
Focus on variety, amount, and nutrition.
Choose foods and beverages with less saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.
Start with small changes to build healthier eating styles.
Support healthy eating for everyone.
Eating healthy is a journey shaped by many factors, including our stage of life, situations, preferences, access to food, culture, traditions, and the personal decisions we make over time. All your food and beverage choices count. MyPlate offers ideas and tips to help you create a healthier eating style that meets your individual needs and improves your health.
Take a look at A Brief History of USDA Food Guides to learn more about previous food guidance symbols.
All food and beverage choices matter – focus on variety, amount, and nutrition.
Focus on making healthy food and beverage choices from all five food groups including fruits, vegetables, grains, protein foods, and dairy to get the nutrients you need.
Eat the right amount of calories for you based on your age, sex, height, weight, and physical activity level.
Building a healthier eating style can help you avoid overweight and obesity and reduce your risk of diseases such as heart disease, ...

A new study shows that 34 of 56 WIC State Agencies are seeing modest decreases in obesity among young children from 2010-2014. The percentage of low-income children (ages 2-4) with obesity enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) decreased from 15.9% in 2010 to 14.5% in 2014.
These findings come from a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Researchers analyzed obesity trends from 2000 to 2014 among young children aged 2-4 years from low-income families enrolled in (WIC). The study was recently published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Trends in Obesity among Participants Aged 2-4 Years in the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children—United States, 2000-2014
Summary
What is already known about this topic?
Previous analyses using Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System (PedNSS) data found that during 2008–2011, obesity prevalence among children aged 2–4 years who participated in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and other nutrition and health programs declined slightly overall, among non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics, and Asians/Pacific Islanders, and in 19 of 43 states and U.S. territories.
What is added by this report?
The WIC Participants and Program Characteristics (WIC PC) census data replace the PedNSS system to report obesity prevalence among low-income young children from more jurisdictions consistently. This is the first study to use WIC ...

Happy birthday MyPlate!
Adults and kids of all ages need healthy nutrition and physical activity. MyPlate was invented just for you!!!
MyPlate is a reminder to find your healthy eating style and build it throughout your lifetime. Everything you eat and drink matters. The right mix can help you be healthier now and in the future. This means:
Focus on variety, amount, and nutrition.
Choose foods and beverages with less saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.
Start with small changes to build healthier eating styles.
Support healthy eating for everyone.
Eating healthy is a journey shaped by many factors, including our stage of life, situations, preferences, access to food, culture, traditions, and the personal decisions we make over time. All your food and beverage choices count. MyPlate offers ideas and tips to help you create a healthier eating style that meets your individual needs and improves your health.
Build a Healthy Eating Style
All food and beverage choices matter – focus on variety, amount, and nutrition.
Focus on making healthy food and beverage choices from all five food groups includingfruits, vegetables, grains, protein foods, and dairy to get the nutrients you need.
Eat the right amount of calories for you based on your age, sex, height, weight, and physical activity level.
Building a healthier eating style can help you avoid overweight and obesity and reduce your risk of diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and ...

A report from the NIH:
We make dozens of decisions every day. When it comes to deciding what to eat and feed our families, it can be a lot easier than you might think to make smart, healthy choices. It takes just a little planning.
The food we put into our bodies is our fuel. It provides us with nutrients—the vitamins, minerals, and other compounds our bodies need to function and thrive. Research shows that good food choices are especially important for children’s growing bodies and minds. Smart choices have both immediate and long-lasting benefits for you and your family.
“My best advice is for parents to be good role models by eating healthy and being physically active with their children,” says Janet de Jesus, a nutritionist at NIH. “Keep healthy foods around the house for meals and snacks. If you save desserts and treats for special occasions, it will be more special. Involve children in the meal planning and cooking, and they will be more likely to eat the meals.”
“Parents can begin teaching their children about healthy eating from the day they are born,” says Dr. Donna Spruijt–Metz, whose research at the University of Southern California focuses on preventing and treating obesity in minority youth. “Setting a good example is very important.”
Try the GO, SLOW, WHOA approach to food. GO foods are great to eat anytime. They have lots of nutrients and ...

Overweight and obesity: the basics, just the facts.....
Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980.
In 2014, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 600 million were obese.
39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight in 2014, and 13% were obese.
More than one-third (34.9% or 78.6 million) of U.S. adults are obese.
Most of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.
42 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2013.
Obesity is preventable. Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, some of the leading causes of preventable death
The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars; the medical costs for people who are obese were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.
Overweight and obesity: definitions
Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health.
Body mass index (BMI) is a simple index of weight-for-height that is commonly used to classify overweight and obesity in adults. It is defined as a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of his height in meters (kg/m2).
The WHO definition is:
a BMI greater than or equal to 25 is overweight
a BMI greater than or equal to 30 is obesity.
BMI provides the most useful population-level measure of overweight ...

Nutrition tips from the NIH
We make dozens of decisions every day. When it comes to deciding what to eat and feed our families, it can be a lot easier than you might think to make smart, healthy choices. It takes just a little planning.
The food we put into our bodies is our fuel. It provides us with nutrients—the vitamins, minerals, and other compounds our bodies need to function and thrive. Research shows that good food choices are especially important for children’s growing bodies and minds. Smart choices have both immediate and long-lasting benefits for you and your family.
“My best advice is for parents to be good role models by eating healthy and being physically active with their children,” says Janet de Jesus, a nutritionist at NIH. “Keep healthy foods around the house for meals and snacks. If you save desserts and treats for special occasions, it will be more special. Involve children in the meal planning and cooking, and they will be more likely to eat the meals.”
“Parents can begin teaching their children about healthy eating from the day they are born,” says Dr. Donna Spruijt–Metz, whose research at the University of Southern California focuses on preventing and treating obesity in minority youth. “Setting a good example is very important.”
Try the GO, SLOW, WHOA approach to food. GO foods are great to eat anytime. They have lots of nutrients and ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration published a new regulation defining the term "gluten-free" for voluntary food labeling. This will provide a uniform standard definition to help the up to 3 million Americans who have celiac disease, an autoimmune digestive condition that can be effectively managed only by eating a gluten free diet.
“Adherence to a gluten-free diet is the key to treating celiac disease, which can be very disruptive to everyday life,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. “The FDA’s new ‘gluten-free’ definition will help people with this condition make food choices with confidence and allow them to better manage their health.”
This new federal definition standardizes the meaning of “gluten-free” claims across the food industry. It requires that, in order to use the term "gluten-free" on its label, a food must meet all of the requirements of the definition, including that the food must contain less than 20 parts per million of gluten. The rule also requires foods with the claims “no gluten,” “free of gluten,” and “without gluten” to meet the definition for “gluten-free.”
The FDA recognizes that many foods currently labeled as “gluten-free” may be able to meet the new federal definition already. Food manufacturers will have a year after the rule is published to bring their labels into compliance with the new requirements.
“We encourage the food industry to come into compliance with the new ...

Walk into any bookstore and you will find hundreds of diet books lining the shelves. Surf the web and your likely to find thousands of diet tips, various questionable nutritional recommendations, as well as a myriad of individuals, some professionals some not so professional, all of whom profess that their plan offers the solution to your nutritional prayers.
It is no wonder that we are confused. It seems as though we have nothing left to eat anymore. Our goal at The Nerdel Company is to set the record straight and declare that all of the macronutrients: Proteins, Carbohydrates and Fats play a vital role in our diets. The focus here is to learn how to strike that balance between all three.
Let's start with the basics. Proteins are known as the building blocks of life. A protein is formed from many smaller amino acids. These amino acids are what make up our muscle tissue, organs, immune system and hormones to name a few. There are a total of 20 amino acids. Eight of them are essential. This means that we must obtain them from our diets. The rest of the amino acids can be made from, or synthesized by the body from those eight essential amino acids. All animal proteins contain the necessary amino acids our bodies need to produce all of the other amino acids. These are known as complete proteins. ...

By Graehm Gray
Let me start off this review by saying this is one book that you need in your home, now! There are hundreds of diet and nutrition books written each year trying to address the problem of adult and childhood obesity. And yet the problem is not getting better. 65% of U.S. adults are overweight and 30 % are obese. 17% of U.S. kids age 2-19 are either obese or overweight. It has been estimated by the World Health Organization that by the year 2030, 90% of all kids, all over the world, will be either overweight or obese. These statistics are startling! In a bad way!
David Zinczenko, Editor-In-Chief of the magazine, Men's Health, and editorial director of Women's Health and Best Life has put together a food guide collection of hundreds of products that shows us exactly what we are eating and what we should be eating. Zinczenko has covered the supermarket s and the menu offerings at various restaurants. From Sushi to Italian, Starbucks to Jamba Juice, from Boboli to Tofutti, from Lean Gourmet to Wendy's. It is all presented in beautiful photos and clear writing that is easily understandable. Did you know that a California Roll from your local Japanese Sushi restaurant made with crab, avocado and cucumber (around 300 calories) may be one of the healthiest meals for kids? Or did you know that a ...